Social Welfare

Law Centre NI has successfully overturned an HMRC decision on the allocation of child benefit in a case involving parents with 50/50 joint custody. The law centre took judicial review proceedings to challenge a decision by HMRC to withdraw child benefit from its client, who was in minimum wage emplo

Human rights lawyer Les Allamby has been appointed to the UK government's Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC). Mr Allamby, a solicitor who has previously served as director of Law Centre NI and chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), is one of six new appoin

The Supreme Court has quashed a decision of the Minister for Social Protection to refuse to grant a widower’s contributory pension to a widowed father of three children and has declared s.124 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 (as amended) unconstitutional in respect of its exclusion

Lone parents will no longer have to prove they have made efforts to seek child maintenance from their child's other parent when applying for the one-parent family payment or jobseekers' transitional payment. The new regulations, signed into effect by social protection minister Heather Humphreys, fol

Legal rights group FLAC has said it is disappointed by a court decision to refuse a widower's pension to a bereaved member of a cohabiting couple with three children, who had lived together in a committed relationship for 20 years but had not married. The High Court last week refused judicial review

The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed a discrimination claim brought by an Irish man who was disqualified from receiving a State pension while he served a prison sentence in the State. The claim was based on Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights and concerned the operation

Northern Ireland’s Court of Appeal has dismissed a claim that a prisoner’s human rights were infringed when his housing benefit was denied for four months during his period of imprisonment. The court found that there had been no discrimination between treatment of convicted and unconvict

A tribunal has found against the Department of Finance for twice refusing to backdate an appellant’s Disabled Person's Allowance. The tribunal found that the Department's repeated and categorical refusal was an unfair misstatement of the law. The Northern Ireland Valuation Tribunal (NIVT) reli

The Northern Ireland Executive has agreed to introduce legislation to extend the so-called "six-month rule" for terminally ill people accessing certain benefits. The High Court ruled last summer that the requirement for terminally ill claimants to demonstrate that their death can reasonably be expec

A single mother-of-two who was refused access to the one parent family payment on the basis she failed to satisfy the habitual residence condition has succeeded in a review with support from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The Social Welfare Appeals Office (SWAO) overturned the refus

The Court of Appeal has allowed an appeal by the Department for Communities (DfC) in a challenge against the legislation which provides that certain people with a terminal illness can receive welfare benefits without undergoing a full assessment. Handing down the judgment yesterday on behalf of a th

A finding that the so-called "six-month rule" for terminally ill people accessing certain benefits is unlawful has been overturned by the Court of Appeal. The High Court ruled last summer that the requirement for terminally ill claimants to demonstrate that their death can reasonably be expected wit

Professor Grainne McKeever, professor of law and social justice at the University of Ulster, has been appointed to chair an independent review of the discretionary support scheme. Professor McKeever will be joined on the panel by Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick, also of University of Ulster; Gerry McConville o

The new Commission on Taxation and Welfare, chaired by Professor Niamh Moloney, head of the law department at LSE, will hold its first meeting today. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe yesterday announced the appointment of 13 tax and welfare experts joining Professor Moloney on the commission.

The UK Supreme Court has refused to accept an application from the Attorney General for Northern Ireland to refer what he said was a “devolution issue” under the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The Attorney General submitted that, by providing postcode lists to the Secretary of State, Norther